showing 12 related works from this author
Octopamine increases individual and collective foraging in a neotropical stingless bee
2020
The biogenic amine octopamine (OA) is a key modulator of individual and social behaviours in honeybees, but its role in the other group of highly eusocial bees, the stingless bees, remains largely unknown. In honeybees, OA mediates reward perception and affects a wide range of reward-seeking behaviours. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that OA increases individual foraging effort and collective food source exploitation in the neotropical stingless bee Plebeia droryana . OA treatment caused a significant increase in the number of bees at artificial sucrose feeders and a 1.73-times higher individual foraging frequency. This effect can be explained by OA lowering the sucrose response threshold …
Statistical models from Octopamine and dopamine mediate waggle dance following and information use in honeybees
2020
Final models in order of appearance in the results section
Use of waggle dance information in honey bees is linked to gene expression in the antennae, but not in the brain.
2021
AbstractCommunication is essential for social animals, but deciding how to utilize information provided by conspecifics is a complex process that depends on environmental and intrinsic factors. Honey bees use a unique form of communication, the waggle dance, to inform nestmates about the location of food sources. However, as in many other animals, experienced individuals often ignore this social information and prefer to rely on prior experiences, i.e. private information. The neurosensory factors that drive the decision to use social information are not yet understood. Here we test whether the decision to use social dance information or private information is linked to gene expression diff…
Foragers of the stingless bee Plebeia droryana inform nestmates about the direction, but not the distance to food sources
2020
The tropical stingless bees have evolved intricate communication systems to recruit nestmates to food locations. Some species are able to accurately communicate the location of food, whereas others simply announce the presence of food in the environment. Plebeia droryana is a tiny Neotropical stingless bee that, until recently, was thought to use a solitary foraging strategy, that is without the use of a recruitment communication system. However, recent research has indicated that P. droryana might be able to recruit nestmates to specific food source locations. We tested this by studying whether foragers can guide nestmates in the direction and the distance of artificial feeders placed in t…
Correlation between octopaminergic signalling and foraging task specialisation in honeybees
2020
Regulation of pollen and nectar foraging in honeybees is linked to differences in the sensitivity to the reward. Octopamine (OA) participates in the processing of reward-related information in the bee brain, being a candidate to mediate and modulate the division of labour among pollen and nectar foragers. Here we tested the hypothesis that OA affects the resource preferences of foragers. We first investigated whether oral administration of OA is involved in the transition from nectar to pollen foraging. We quantified the percentage of OA-treated bees that switched from a sucrose solution to a pollen feeder when the sugar concentration was decreased experimentally. We also evaluated if feedi…
Resource profitability, but not caffeine, affects individual and collective foraging in the stingless beePlebeia droryana
2019
ABSTRACT Plants and pollinators form beneficial relationships, with plants offering resources in return for pollination services. Some plants, however, add compounds to nectar to manipulate pollinators. Caffeine is a secondary plant metabolite found in some nectars that affects foraging in pollinators. In honeybees, caffeine increases foraging and recruitment to mediocre food sources, which might benefit the plant, but potentially harms the colonies. For the largest group of social bees, the stingless bees, the effect of caffeine on foraging behaviour has not been tested yet, despite their importance for tropical ecosystems. More generally, recruitment and foraging dynamics are not well und…
Octopamine and dopamine mediate waggle dance following and information use in honeybees.
2020
Honeybees can be directed to profitable food sources by following waggle dances performed by other bees. Followers can often choose between using this social information or relying on memories about food sources they have visited in the past, so-called private information. While the circumstances that favour the use of either social or private information have received considerable attention, still little is known about the neurophysiological basis of information use. We hypothesized that octopamine and dopamine, two biogenic amines with important functions in reward signalling and learning, affect dance use in honeybees. We orally administered octopamine and dopamine when bees collected fo…
Forager age and foraging state, but not cumulative foraging activity, affect biogenic amine receptor gene expression in the honeybee mushroom bodies
2020
Foraging behavior is crucial for the development of a honeybee colony. Biogenic amines are key mediators of learning and the transition from in-hive tasks to foraging. Foragers vary considerably in their behavior, but whether and how this behavioral diversity depends on biogenic amines is not yet well understood. For example, forager age, cumulative foraging activity or foraging state may all be linked to biogenic amine signaling. Furthermore, expression levels may fluctuate depending on daytime. We tested if these intrinsic and extrinsic factors are linked to biogenic amine signaling by quantifying the expression of octopamine, dopamine and tyramine receptor genes in the mushroom bodies, i…
Raw data used in statistical analyses from Octopamine and dopamine mediate waggle dance following and information use in honeybees
2020
Individual information on waggle dances and feeder visits
Marked Plebeia droryana is on the feed dispenser (image3) from Octopamine increases individual and collective foraging in a neotropical stingless bee
2020
For the promotion my article on social media
Plebeia droryana visits the flowers of Euphorbia milii (image2) from Octopamine increases individual and collective foraging in a neotropical stingle…
2020
For the promotion my article on social media
Plebeia droryana is in the colony (image 1) from Octopamine increases individual and collective foraging in a neotropical stingless bee
2020
For the promotion my article on social media